Using a subset of the Gentoo repository

Excluding packages and categories

It is possible to selectively update certain categories/packages and ignore the other categories/packages. This can be achieved by having rsync exclude categories/packages during the emerge --sync step.

Define the name of the file that contains the exclude patterns in the PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS variable in /etc/portage/make.conf:

FILE/etc/portage/make.confDefining the exclude file

PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude-from=/etc/portage/rsync_excludes"

FILE/etc/portage/rsync_excludesExcluding all games

games-*/*

Note however that this may lead to dependency issues since new, allowed packages might depend on new but excluded packages.

Adding unofficial ebuilds

Defining a custom repository

It is possible to ask Portage to use ebuilds that are not officially available through the Gentoo repository. Create a new directory (for instance /usr/local/portage) in which to store the 3rd-party ebuilds. Use the same directory structure as the official Gentoo repository!

root #mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/{metadata,profiles}

root #chown -R portage:portage /usr/local/portage

Next, pick a sensible name for the repository. The next example uses "localrepo" as the name:

root #echo 'localrepo' > /usr/local/portage/profiles/repo_name

Tell Portage that the repository master is the main Gentoo repository, and that the repository should not be automatically synchronized (as it is not backed by an rsync server, git mirror or other repository source):

FILE/usr/local/portage/metadata/layout.conf

masters=gentooauto-sync=false

Finally, enable the repository on the local system by creating a repository configuration file inside /etc/portage/repos.conf, informing Portage where the local repository can be found:

FILE/etc/portage/repos.conf/localrepo.conf

[localrepo]location=/usr/local/portage

Working with several overlays

For the power users who develop on several overlays, test packages before they hit the Gentoo repository or just want to use unofficial ebuilds from various sources, the app-portage/layman package brings layman, a tool to help users keep the overlay repositories up to date.

Layman

First install and configure layman as shown in the Overlays User Guide, and add the desired repositories with layman -a.

For instance, to enable the hardened-development overlay:

root #layman -a hardened-development

Regardless of how many repositories are used through layman, all the repositories can be updated with the following command:

root #layman -S

For more information on working with overlays, please read man layman and the previously linked layman/overlay users' guide.

Non-Portage maintained software

Using Portage with self-maintained software

Sometimes users want to configure, install and maintain software individually without having Portage automate the process, even though Portage can provide the software titles. Known cases are kernel sources and Nvidia drivers. It is possible to configure Portage so it knows that a certain package is manually installed on the system (and thus take this information into account when calculating dependencies). This process is called injecting and is supported by Portage through the /etc/portage/profile/package.provided file.

For instance, to inform Portage about gentoo-sources- which has been installed manually, add the following line to /etc/portage/profile/package.provided: